Hide My Light: A Romantic Suspense Thriller Novel (Hide Me Series Book 3) by Lisa Ladew Page B

in her life already.
    The door the girl had come through opened again and a man appeared, calling out a name. “Amelia?” When he saw Katerina and the little girl he skidded to a stop. “Amelia, baby, please, you have to come back.”
    The girl looked backwards at the man Katerina assumed was her father once and then screamed into the wall again. “I hate him! I don’t want to see him!”
    “Baby, he’s your little brother,” the man said.
    “But Mom might die! If she dies, he killed her!”
    The man’s face collapsed and tears dropped from his eyes. Katerina stepped back as he moved towards his girl and tried to hug her. Katerina held a hand out to West who took it and tried to pull her down the stairs, but she stopped him, heading towards the second floor doorway instead.
    Katerina pushed open the door and walked down the hospital hallway a few feet, looking left and right. West tried to pull her back. “Kat, we have to go. It’s not safe for us to be here.”
    Katerina looked at him, her eyes beseeching. “I don’t care! That little girl’s mom is dying.” Her voice grew quiet and she leaned close to West, whispering. “She just gave birth to the girl’s little brother and the doctors say she lost too much blood and they can’t help her. They’ve given up on her completely.”
    West’s face twisted. “Do you think you can fix her?”
    “I have to try! I won’t do what that man in the parking lot did to us.”
    West nodded. He understood, even if he hated it.
    Katerina pulled him down the hallway and through the heavy double doors that led into the obstetrics ward. She took a left past the nurse’s station as if she belonged there, trusting West to follow her. She pushed open a door that looked like every other door in the place. Inside, there was only one woman on a hospital bed, wires attached to her body and then attached to multiple machines, crisscrossed and running every which way. One slow blip thudded across the heart monitor, confirming that she was still alive. For now.
    The woman looked young, certainly no older than thirty. Her thick black hair cascaded across the pillow, the picture of health. Her eyes were closed and a tube protruded from her mouth, where a machine was pushing air into her lungs for her, keeping her alive. For now. Until everyone had said goodbye to her and they decided to pull it.
    Katerina crossed the room quickly and touched the woman’s wrist. She asked her special sense what was going on with the woman and got an answer immediately. Bleeding in a secret place in the brain from a tiny aneurysm that sprung an infinitesimal leak during her hard labor.
    Not sure exactly what to do, Katerina grazed her index fingers lightly at the woman’s temples. Yes, right in there.
    Heal , she thought. Stop the bleeding , she commanded. Heal the vessel wall. Absorb the blood. Her hands grew hot immediately, and she pressed them to the side of the woman’s head. On the monitor, the woman’s heartbeat sped up. Katerina glanced at it but did not pull her hands back. The nurses would be coming at a run soon. Hopefully she would be done before they arrived. She couldn’t stop now. The raging hunger spread through her body like a wildfire again. She ignored it. But weakness came with it and she didn’t know how long she could hold on. Her knees gave way slightly. West came up behind her and braced her and she smiled gratefully.
    “Katerina, are you hurting yourself?”
    Katerina shook her head and concentrated.
    The woman’s eyes flew open and she shared a knowing, terrified look with Katerina, then she lost it. She gagged. Her hands fluttered up and pulled at the tube coming from her mouth.
    Katerina felt the heat in her hands recede. She moved them down the woman’s face to her neck and then pulled away. “You have to relax, then it won’t be so bad. You won’t be able to pull it out. I will have a nurse remove it,” she told the woman.
    The door to the room slammed open